Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Review of Mengrei Thai with my gals

So this weekend it was my school girls' last weekend before they all went off to their respective parts of the planet to continue their lives after we all completed Nutrition school together. Yes it was a sad weekend of farewells but it all cullminated with a delicious comfort meal of Thai food at a very quaint but busy restaurant tucked on an Ontario street corner. The restaurant doubles as a cooking school so the chef and assistants certainly know what they are doing as they educate on the art of cooking all day.

The decor is very cute as the walls are made up of exposed brick and paintings line the walls. Very clean, simple but cute. The only awkward part is that the place is divided into 3 separate rooms. 1 small room in the middle as you walk in from outside then the 2 main dining rooms at either side. I always like the more open concept type space but all in all it is a pleasant atmosphere.
As for the food, my friend and I shared the fresh cold vegetarian spring rolls to start. Filled with tofu, mango, carrots and hoisin sauce, it was light and refreshing - perfect to start the meal off.

Next the 3 of us had 3 of their top dishes. I had the green curry with shrimp. My friends had the red curry with tofu and the pad thai respectively. These were 3 of the most highly recommended dishes from both my friend who had been there before and the waiter. Both curries were delicious with the green version being slightly more spicey than the red. My stomach doesn't do too well with spicey but the steamed rice I added to the mix tamed the heat down considerably making it much more enjoyable and worry free! Large morsels of shrimp swam in the flavourful broth, finished with all sorts of veges.

Red curry

All in all the food was delish. One thing I would recommend to all my foodies wanting to dine there is to speficy in you reservation (and yes you should reserve as it gets packed) that you would like to sit in one of the 2 main dining rooms and not the lonely bar area which we were designated to since we hadn't specified..

Also, the service was a little on the slow side, although we realized we had been assigned to the 2 new employees who had apparently only been there for 2 days so who knows if they had made a mistake in the ordering....and maybe another reason why they assigned them to the small empty room were were sitting in. However, all the waiters and manager alike were very welcoming, sweet and attentive, which made up for the long wait...Buuuut of course I couldn't help but do my usual get up and ask the waiting staff if our food had been forgotten (as if they had literally lost our orders..what happens when you're desperately hungry haha)